John McTernan is a commentator and political strategist who works internationally. He was Political Secretary to Tony Blair and most recently was the Director of Communications for Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

David Axelrod can do for Ed Miliband what he did for President Obama: get him elected

"We’ll see your Mayoral campaign and raise you two Presidencies." In effect, that’s what Labour said last night when announcing the appointment of David Axelrod as Senior Strategic Adviser. Ed Miliband has once again shown that he makes the big calls boldly and correctly. Labour doesn’t need a change of strategy – they have one. It does, though, need to step up a level.

We are in the longest "long campaign" in British history – almost American in its length thanks to the fixed-term parliament. The phase we are in is the battle of political frames. The Tories want the question at the next election to be – "Who do you trust most to run the economy." Labour want it to be – "Are you better off than you were five years ago?"

At the moment, no one has broken through. It’s a war of attrition with Labour holding a dominant but not decisive position for the last three years. The Tory aim is to grind out a victory. Labour’s ambition, as Miliband at his best has shown, is to win a decisive mandate. The Axelrod appointment is an emblem of that aim – there is no one better in the world at strategic framing and messaging. Not for the first time Ed has shown he won’t die wondering.

It was an interesting fight because while we lost the war, we won the messaging battle going away. The president’s message – that we needed to deal with the deficit in a balanced way and raise taxes on the wealthy so that we could make investments in things like education and research and development – really made sense to people. And it made sense to people by about 20 points over the Republican message.

Getting messaging right means the best polling – and Axelrod will be working with Stan Greenberg. But it also means flair – choosing what to say and when to go, and going hard.

Second, discipline. In the same interview with David Muir Axelrod says:

In the very first meeting we had as a team, he [Obama] said we would have just three rules:

We were going to run a grassroots campaign because that was the only kind of politics he knew and believed in, and it was the only way he thought he was going to win.

There ought to be joy in the pursuit of competing for the presidency. It’s a deadly serious business but we were all in it for a reason – to be able to try and move the country in the right direction. It ought to be hard but it also ought to be fun.
He didn’t want anyone turning on anyone else. "If I see people leaking information on each other or pointing fingers then I’m going to ask you to leave", he said, "because we’re going to rise or fall together".

This is crucial. The most recent British Labour and Australian Labor governments were brought down by infighting. Disunity is death. It shouldn’t need saying but it does.

Third, self-discipline. When you get to the top of any organisation you should be able to add value to the work of your colleagues. The trick is to do just that – add value. The danger is that instead you meddle in other people’s work and mar it. Jonathan Powell, when he was Tony Blair’s Chief of Staff, divided all tasks into three types. One, the work that was his responsibility alone. Two, the work that he could get involved with and did improve. Three, the work that he would only be interfering in and making things worse. A great way of working and how Axelrod intends to work with Greenberg and Douglas Alexander who sealed the deal with him.

It is worth noting that both main parties have now appointed imported election strategists. It’s a reflection of the globalisation of politics. The battle in the US and Australia is very similar in broad strategic terms to the one in the UK. Put bluntly, elections are won in the centre. Clinton, Blair and Rudd all showed that. In tribute to those triumphs the right correctly copied the tactics and the victories of Cameron in the UK, Harper in Canada and Key in New Zealand are the consequence. The Republicans got halfway there. Choosing, in McCain and Romney, centrist candidates – but shackling them to right-wing policies. The intriguing thing about next year’s General Election is that we seem to be gearing up for a more old-fashioned battle. Pulled by Ukip and pushed by Lynton Crosby Cameron is moving right-wards. The centre is being vacated – at least by one side. When the Republicans did that in 2008, Axelrod got the most radical Democrat for decades elected. His opportunity in the UK is to exploit the same strategic error by the Conservatives.